Not sure where to ask, but I gotta...

I've had great tones from AMT PreAmps :



My Favourite is the SS-20. The SS-11 is more 'gainy', both have a tube inside, and cabsim out:

 

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My DSL40CR crunch channel on half power nails the tones on my JMP. Got hot high gain tones too, fx loop, reverb and good master volumes

A bargain lower power marshall. Nice for small gigs too.

 

I have a Katana Mark 2 50 watt combo and I simply couldn't gel with it. It's for sale if anyone's interested. Maybe 40 hours on it, pristine, and I think I still have the original box.


Now I use a Marshall Origin 50 watt combo. That has three switchable output levels: 5, 25 and 50 watts I believe. Smaller (cheaper) Origin models are available but you'll probably need the full 50 watts to drown out the 120 decibel nagging wife and the 200 decibel screaming babies.

 

Your life is going to be Inverted from what it is now. Right now, you have chunks of time to spend in your "Music Location", with relatively few interruptions. Your "free time" is going to be micro-snippets, and will occur in places that are usually not in your home. Your arms wiil be filled with Car Seat, diaper bag, stroller, diaper, diaper, laundry... etc.
You want small, portable, can be made relatively quiet.

I knew a guy 35-40 yrs ago that had a Headless and a Pignose. He thought it through, he was able to work practice into the schedule, and the little ones learned to like music.

You want Mom to be able to go to sleep, and baby to be able to go to sleep. Trust me on that one. It will be a major compromise for now, but it will pay off in the long run. As the little one gets older, they will get louder, and you can, too.

It's much easier to work with them, than against them.

 

I second the Pignose. They sound a lot bigger than they are. Put a tone-cloning pedal or rack in front of it (like the afore-mentioned Joyo and I think you'll be OK.

As far as modeling on a computer goes, it couldn't be any simpler, or cheaper. I have a list of absolutely free amp simulator plugins and cabinet impulses that work better than OK, and anybody on here who's done anything at all with computer recording (myself included) can give you all the tips and tricks you need, with hardly any learning curve. The only expense would be the computer and a decent guitar-to-computer interface, which, for just plugging in and jamming, you could go with a middle-of-the-road Walmart laptop, a Behringer interface, and a good set of over-the-ear headphones and be just fine.

 

When my youngest was born almost 15 years ago we decided that we would get her used to louder noises early on. Not ear deafening volumes but at that time band practice was in my jam room/studio. She never cried nor did it ever bother her sleeping. Maybe i just got lucky being she is just like me. I can sleep through damn near anything.

 

+1 for this.

I saw @Jakedog mention the Tech 21 Fly Rig. That's a pretty great way to go. However, the THR amp series are rock stars. I drum in a band where we all go direct to headphones/IEM's; one guitarist uses the Tech21 RK5, which is fantastic. The other guitarist runs out of his THR10 direct, which he uses as a pedal platform. Even fantasticer. Even without pedals, it will fool your ear holes into thinking they're being pummelled by 8 12's and a hundred watts. He also has the THR100HD-II, and it pushes air like a tube amp. Both the THR's are more than good enough sounding to fool most people into thinking you're running a big stack of tube amps and cabs. The included cab IR's sound really good too. I would not mess around with anything else and go straight to the THR series.

 

that's where the reactive load + good IRs come into play...sounds great/organic with headphones and studio monitors...

 

It seems like your problem is that you can't use the gear you already have at the volume needed to make it sound good. You don't have a computer and that's like saying you don't own a phone. If you had a Mac, you'd have built in recording software. Please tell me you have an iPhone? If you do, the answer to your problem, for just over half the price of your budget is the Two Notes Captor X. It'll still work with an Android but the iPhone comes with GarageBand and you can record with that. You'll also need some nice headphones but you should still come under budget. https://www.two-notes.com/torpedo-captorx You'll be able to use your amps and play them with impulse response (IR) cabinets. The Captor X is also an attenuator.






https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...a-375141381286&campaignid=741659211&gclsrc=ds

 

I have the Captor X. I've been playing with it for a month or so. I like it but I'm not finished reviewing it. The one thing I'm not fond of is the three position toggle or attenuation levels. They should have put in a pot so you cold dial in the level you want. Also, the reverb effect that comes built in the unit is not great but I have a reverb pedal and a couple of amps with on board reverb.

You don't need another amp only to leave the amps you have and love sitting and gathering dust, you just need a way to play them quieter and sometimes silently when you have a baby in the next room.

 

Up your budget slightly and get a Friedman PT20. It’s got a great master volume. Slays for the hot rodded Marshall tone.

That is for if you can play pretty quietly but still be heard. If you need silent, then yeah, get yourself a used Axe FX Ultra or Helix or something and go headphones.

 

"One word. Plastics."

Another word. Delay.

When I play low vol in the house, any carpeting can kill the feel. I feel a heck of a lot better with a low-level delay on single-repeat. The effect should be felt more than heard. If it is too loud, you'll get the Sun slap-back effect. I like enough delay to invoke a sense of a small, low-budget, early 50's recording studio.

This doesn't address your problem, of course, but lately I have been compelled to recommend this whenever I get a chance.

I'm not talking about reverb. That's a different kind of sound.

 

I'm running my guitar(s) through a pedal board sometimes, into one of several amps I'v chosen to play that day (today it's an Emery SuperBaby with a 12AX7, KT-66 and 5V4G rectifier). Then it's going into the Captor X with no speaker cab out and into my UAD Apollo Twin audio interface and then into my iMac desktop computer. Out into my Sennheiser headphones. Silent but deadly. That's a small head but I can crank it all the way up for breakup on its own with no pedals.